Google Drive vs OneDrive vs Dropbox – Storage Comparison

Allie Hawkins2019-05-03

Keeping your data online has become a norm these days, so for most users the question is not “whether to subscribe to a cloud storage service or not?” but “which cloud storage service to choose?” The market offers a lot of options, and for a newbie it might be difficult to select a service most suitable to one’s needs and wallet.

To make things easier, we will tell you what you should pay attention when choosing a service. Let us take the most popular services as an example – Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox.

The first thing you need to check is whether the service supports the operating system your computer and devices run on. In our case Google Drive is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Android and iOS; OneDrive works with all of them plus Windows phone, while Dropbox is the champion here – apart from the mentioned OSs, it also works on Blackberry and Kindle fire. So if you need to access your online data from a Blackberry mobile, you are left with the only option – Dropbox. Those who are not planning to work with online data from Kindle or Blackberry devices, read on.

Next thing that matters is the free storage size. For Google Drive it is 15 GB, although be aware that this is to be shared across all Google services. Thus, for example, if you send large attachments via your gmail account, their size will be counted in. Automatic backup of your smartphone pictures on Google Plus will consume some of this 15 GB storage too. Microsoft initially was really generous with free storage space on OneDrive but was quick to decrease it from 15 GB to 5 GB. It is still more than 2 GB offered by Dropbox. Don’t be quick to dismiss Dropbox option though – the provider allows you to earn a lot of space through referrals and things like learning the basics of Dropbox. OneDrive and Google Drive do not have such incentives.

As for how much space is offered to you at what price, the paid plans keep changing, so it might be better if you check the latest prices on the services’ websites.

There is a restriction on the maximum size of files you upload online. For OneDrive it is 10 GB, same for Dropbox if you upload to Dropbox via web interface, and if you use Dropbox client app, there is no limitation. Google Drive storage file size restriction is 5 TB.

The centralized client for all services - CloudMounter

We gave you a general overview of the mainstream cloud services. Of course, there are lesser-known options and they might meet your requirements even better, you never know. Nobody stops you from subscribing to several services either; especially since there is CloudMounter by Eltima Software. This app allows you to manage multiple cloud services in an easy and efficient way. It enables you to mount Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive as network drive on Mac so you can access their contents as it were stored locally. Apart from the services we have already mentioned, CloudMounter supports Amazon S3 and connects to remote servers via FTP/ SFTP/ FTPS and WebDAV protocols. You thus get a point of access to all your data stored online – connect to Google Drive, upload folder to Dropbox, etc. from a single window. Once you decide what cloud storage service to subscribe to, make sure to give CloudMounter a try, the app will certainly make difference in the way you mount Google and connect to Dropbox or any other cloud storage.